Interview: Photographer Tania Betti (Italy)

Can you tell us a little about you? I am a woman like many others, I live and work in Rome, I am married to Francesco a comic artist and I am the "mother" of a beautiful European cat named Khaleesi. Photography, together with my husband, is my great love, but I love art in general, in particular painting, cinema and theater. I consider myself a very restless person, I like to always have everything under control and I like to command, perhaps even too much. Some friends and colleagues have given me the nickname THE TANISHER, I think this speaks volumes about my personality! How and when did you get into photography? My first teenage crush was actually for the art of drawing (we are still good friends and we hang out every now and then!). When I was seventeen a teacher from my high school caught me scribbling in my philosophy book and instead of punishing me she advised me to enroll in a drawing school. I started attending The Roman School of Comics. Having grown up in a small provincial town, that was the first place where I was able to interact with people like me, nerds and art lovers and I still remember that period today as one of the happiest times of my life. At the time I had no idea what photoshop was and in my childhood the only mention of photography was the disposable film cameras we used on family outings. The revelation came one day while I was coloring one of my drawings with a program, I still remember the name, ULEAD PHOTOEXPRESS, which obviously no longer exists! I simply suddenly realized that the program I was using to color and apply filters to my drawing was actually designed to edit photographs. So I decided to try to use it for its purpose; I bought a compact digital camera from Sony that shot only in jpg and I started taking pictures of my classmates. Fifteen years later here I am! What does photography mean to you? Photography for me is a quarrelsome companion, a love that I don't always feel reciprocated, a therapy and at the same time a condemnation. I love how I can express myself through it, I love how I feel happy and in control of the situation on my sets (a security that I don't have in everyday life) but I hate all the entrepreneurial part; having to know how to sell your works, the obsessive care that you have to have for social media… the Latin poet Catullo would say "ODI ET AMO". Please briefly describe your photography style for our readers. Usually when we talk about photographic style we talk about that something that unites all the production of a photographer, but I'm not a person with such clear ideas about it, and I'm happy not to be! I always leave all doors open and every job is different for me in the way I manage lights, colors, places, subjects, post-production, etc. What never changes is my modus operandi, so I believe that my style is not evident from the final aesthetic result but from how I manage the organization of my projects, of which in fact I am not only the photographer but also the creative director and often also the set designer! Where do you get inspiration from? Everything is a source of inspiration for me: it can be an orange hot water bottle in the shape of a fish, the photo of another photographer that I like but I would have done differently, the particular face of a model, the dress of a fashion designer… The inspiration is something lightning fast, I never know when it will come or from what, I just know that my Pinterest has at least 15 secret boards full of references for my next shootings! Many ideas and always a short time. Do you think in advance what you want in the picture ? Here's how I said before this is my distinctive feature: I always think much in advance about what I want, but not from the single shot but from the photographic project as a whole. It usually works like this: I see something that inspires me, ideas begin to flow, I search the web for images that somehow evoke my idea to show the rest of the team what I would like to do, I find the right model, I start the search for outfit with the stylist and finally I put everything in black and white on a pdf that illustrates every logistical aspect of the shooting: where we will shoot, how many hours are dedicated to each make-up and each change of clothes, how the various changes of look must follow one another etc. So far I have a super methodical and organized approach. Then I arrive on the set and starting from that base the magic happens. Sometimes the work takes place exactly as I had thought it, other times I let myself be carried away by the inspiration of the moment, variables intervene, and the final result can be something different. Studio, on location or both? Each of the two offers different creative possibilities. I really like shooting in the studio because it's a more controlled environment and I'm a control freak, I think especially at the beginning it was my comfort zone. But as I progressed, I began to shoot more and more outdoors, to appreciate natural light and to get carried away a little more by the unexpected and the inspiration of the moment. I would say this represents my two photographic visions well… I don't think if I'll ever really choose just one of the two!

Would you consider yourself a hobbyist or a paid professional? It is not easy to be a photographer nowadays, at least not in Italy and I have faced several moments of crisis in which I thought of leaving everything and starting a "normal" new job. To date I'm still looking for a balance between paid photographic work and unpaid personal projects, let's say that for now I consider myself in the middle: not always paid but always professional! What has been your most memorable session and why? Well they say that first love is never forgotten! I am very fond of the memory of my first editorial, which to begin with in a simple way I made with three models and a rented Volkswagen van! I still remember well the anxiety I had, I felt the responsibility of having to give an excellent final product to all those people who were working with me because they believed in my idea, and just as well I remember the happiness I felt when not only my work was accepted from the magazine but even ended up on the cover. That gave me a boost of self-confidence and definitely set me on the path I still walk today. Nikon or Canon? Favorite lens? I started with Nikon and will continue with Nikon, but more out of habit than for other reasons, also because technicalities have never interested me much. Regarding lenses, I recently discovered a great love for wide-angle lenses and their distortions, currently the lenses I use most often are the 28mm 2.8 and the 50mm 1.8 What is one piece of advice you would like to offer a new photographer looking to start their own business? The artistic aspects are completely personal, but one thing I feel like giving advice on is the one I would like someone to have given me advice on at the beginning of my journey: do not underestimate social media and markenting. To date, if you really want to make a living from photography, these are two aspects that matter as much as talent and creativity (maybe also more, unfortunately).

What do you think of our new magazine? Your magazine is well edited and selects deserving artists, but you have my esteem above all for one reason: the free submissions and free pdf copies of the magazine. I find that today the situation is getting out of hand in the world of independent publishing and that many magazines now have the sole purpose of earning rather than promoting emerging artists. A photographer and his team often carry out the editorial projects they propose at their own expense and I find it absurd that many independent magazines get paid even just to view the proposed works. Free submission should always be present, regardless of the media follow-up of a magazine. If only as a form of respect for the work done by creatives. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TANIABETTIPHOTOGRAPHYfashionbookadv Website https://taniabettiphotography.jimdofree.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taniabettiphotography/